Last February, as part of our annual 3-concert young artist series Monk in Motion: The next face of jazz, Tribeca Performing Arts Center presented the three finalists in the 2012 Thelonious Monk Competition. The medium was the drum and we presented bands led by young drummers Jamison Ross (2012 winner), Colin Stranahan, and Justin Brown on successive Saturdays. Each concert was preceded by our customary pre-concert humanities program and for the February 2 series kickoff concert, featuring Ross, I had a sort of roundtable dialogue with two vastly experienced drummers (Dianne Reeves once cautioned me once that you should never refer to a woman as a “veteran”), Carl Allen and Allison Miller.

Carl Allen’s most recent recorded effort is as a member of bassist Christian McBride’s band Inside Straight (“People Music”, Mack Avenue). Allison Miller’s latest recording with her band Boom Tic Boom is “No Morphine, No Lillies” (The Royal Potato Family).

PART ONE

Cozy Cole “Concerto for Cozy”

Carl Allen: I enjoyed it, it had a bounce to it and to me that’s one of the things that if I had my druthers in terms of what I’m going to listen to, that would be it; not necessarily this idiom per se, although I do love that… but just the whole feeling of the bounce; its happy, its got a forward motion to it. It reminded me of Zutty Singleton and Papa Jo, I enjoyed it; the call & response was very creative.

Allison Miller: I agree with Carl about the bounce; immediately it was like “yes”… To me if it feels good that’s pretty much the key thing. The other thing I loved is that you could really hear the drummer’s bass drum in this recording, you could hear him feathering the bass drum and with a lot of old recordings you can’t hear that, so I enjoyed that. I think because you can’t hear the bass drum a lot in older recordings a lot of young drummers go into university or college and no one has told them about feathering the bass drum, at least that’s my experience. They come into big band and they’re not playing the bass drum, and then when they do play the bass drum its just really loud. So I think that’s a special art form that’s kinda being lost.

Jo Jones & Milt Hinton “The Walls Fall”

Allison: That was amazing; I was not expecting the brushes to come in like that. I don’t even know what to say, that’s what I strive for, with brush playing, right there.

WJ: You mentioned feathering the bass drum being somewhat of a lost art; is it the same with brush work?

Allison: I think, yeah; I hate to admit it but I think it is. [Turns to ask Carl] Do you agree?

Carl: Absolutely.

WJ: So what did you think of that track?

Carl: I loved it, and whoever it was – if it wasn’t Papa Jo…

WJ: It was Papa Jo Jones; it’s a very special recording, a duo recording with Milt Hinton.

Carl: Yeah, “Percussion & Bass.” I’m a little biased but I think that’s the most important relationship in the band, between the bass and the drums. Because, as my good friend Christian McBride says, it’s the foundation and you don’t start building the house from the roof. It’s the bass and the drums that create the dance and allows for the rest of the band to float on top. And if you just check out the history of jazz recording its no accident that you will see the same bass and drums as a team on a lot of different recordings. We can do word association and say – Elvin [Jones] & Jimmy Garrison, Tony [Williams] & Ron [Carter], Paul Chambers & Philly Joe [Jones]; we could go on down the list for the next six hours…

It’s no accident because, Allison, I’m sure you’ve experienced this, quite often when people call you they’ll say “so and so (a bass player) asked me to call you, I’ve got this record date. Or they’ll say ‘what bass player do you want to play with’, it happens all the time.

Allison: Exactly.

Carl: But technical mastery… I love that [“Percussion & Bass’] recording. You got a collection there… that’s out of print, you don’t hear that too often!

Max Roach & Dizzy Gillespie “Georges Cinq”

WJ: Another duo; in that case Max Roach & Dizzy Gillespie. What’d you hear there?

Carl: Creativity. The thing that always amazes me about Max , for my personal taste. he is one of the few drummers who can keep an audience’s attention just by playing solo, for a long time. When I first moved to New York in 1981 (New Jersey at the time), Max would do solo concerts from time to time, and would play duo concerts with rappers and poets.

WJ: …And he could take the hi hat and entertain you for fifteen minutes with just that.

Carl: Absolutely. And if you think about his career, its very fascinating in terms of all of the different things that he’s done – not only from being a pioneering bebop drummer, but if you look at what he did with M’Boom, that was really incredible.

I remember talking with Dizzy after a concert we had in Japan, it was really a moment that helped to cement my mantra; it was August 16, 1987 and I said to Dizzy – you know Dizzy was always the kinda person who was laughing and joking, and he’s backstage sweating and laughing about something. I said “Diz, I really wish I was around in the 40s and 50s…” He stopped and said “Carl, why would you say such a thing” – as if it was offensive. I said “just to be there when you guys were creating bebop.” He said “that was an important time, but the way that all great art is created is that there’s a foot in the past and a foot in the future and that you’re moving forward with a sense of tradition.”

That reminds me very much of Max because he was very much a traditionalist, but always moving forward, always trying to create something different And that to me was the epitome of what the bebop musicians were; that’s what bebop was, it was a revolt from what was going on previously.

Allison: Max was always such a great composer and drummers are underrated for their composition and he’s always been a big inspiration for me with composition, same with Jack DeJohnette. The way Max tied social change and political change to his music… Everybody was doing that during the Civil Rights movement, but he was just very literal about it, which I really appreciated that statement when I started listening to Max. The way he would combine a gospel choir and drums – “Motherless Child” is amazing – and the way he combined string quartet and drums. He was constantly thinking out of the box.

I was listening to that track and I loved that looseness of it; sometimes I think that looseness is being lost, the way each beat breathes. He was keeping that ostinato pattern going with his feet. The other drummer who does that, who my whole life I’ve just obsessed over, is Edward Blackwell. He’s the other guy to me who could just hold an audience with a solo.

Roy Haynes “In The Afternoon”

WJ: What can you say about Roy Haynes?

Allison: [Laughs] How long do we have?

Carl: I’m glad you’re first [laughs]…

Allison: He’s the definition of modern jazz, even in that recording he still sounds younger than any drummer I know! He’s had that sound… It’s just incredible to me that he has that tight, crisp sound and he’s so musical. You probably know him personally; I think Carl should talk because I don’t know [Roy] personally…

Carl: Yeah, but you know what you felt [laughs].

Allison: Talk about forward motion! That felt so good.

Carl: Roy is an interesting case study, on many levels. One, he defies age. But the thing that’s amazing to me about Roy – and you can go back and check him out with Bird, or with Chick Corea, the list goes on and on… But conceptually speaking his style never really changed much, but it always sounds fresh! I remember mentioning that to him once, and he said “I hadn’t thought about that before, but you’re right.” I mean it always sounds fresh.

In a strange kinda way it reminds me of Louis Armstrong; you could listen to records of his and he always sounds like he’s about 20-30 years ahead of the rest of the band conceptually. But [Roy’s] ride cymbal just floats; the way he’s able to play across the bar line and have conversations between the limbs is just amazing.

I remember once we were playing with Freddie [Hubbard] at the Blue Note and [Roy] was in the dressing room, he and Stanley Turrentine, just kinda hanging out. So Freddie wants to show off because there’s some guests in the dressing room. He says “Roy, get in here with your little short, funny dressing self. You know I never could play with you, you’ve got a funny beat.” So Turrentine said, “you gonna take that?” They were sitting there drinking. So he said “Yeah, ok…”, he just let Freddie talk. He said “yeah, you got a funny beat, you dress funny and you’re short…” Of course Stanley’s saying “I wouldn’t take that…” So Roy says, “Funny beat, huh Hub? That’s funny man, ‘cause Bird didn’t have no problems, Pres didn’t have no problems, Mary Lou Williams didn’t have no problems…” And he went on and on until finally Freddie said “get out, get outta my dressing room…” Roy is really something special…

Allison: To me Roy’s ride [cymbal] sounds like what ice skating sounds like; like the feeling of ice skating on a pond, whenever I hear Roy’s ride cymbal. If I’m having a down day and just don’t feel like I’m locking in with my beat, I just play along to “After Hours” from We Three [Haynes with Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers] and then life is good again.

Carl: The thing that’s interesting to me about Roy, his playing goes against what we’re taught as drummers. Like when you’re young just about everyone tells you when you’re playing the crash cymbal, hit the bass drum to give it some weight. Roy doesn’t play the bass drum with the crash cymbal! I mentioned that to him and he was like “yeah, OK, so what?” [laughs]. He just said “that’s how I hear it.” So much of what he does goes against conventional wisdom. He’s amazing…

Tony Williams “There Comes a Time”

WJ: Kind of a mantra like quality there…

Carl: Not sure who it was, but I dug it…

Allison: Tony [Williams], right? Lifetime.

WJ: Yeah, the Ego record.

Allison: [Sings] “There comes a time…” he sings on that record, I love his singing. I love that record, and that song particularly. I really obsessed over that song when I first bought that album. I bought the vinyl and just listened to that song over and over.

WJ: Had the same effect on me.

Allison: Tony was the reason I started playing drums, from Miles Smiles. I remember I was little playing drums – I grew up in Maryland – and I was listening to early hip hop and stuff my parents listened to, like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Meters, Prince, Michael Jackson and all that stuff.

Then I started taking drum lessons and somebody gave me a Buddy Rich record and now I’d be into it, but at that point I wasn’t into it. And then somebody gave me Miles Smiles and I was totally taken the second I heard Tony Williams play. I said “oh, that’s what I want to do!” The way he was interacting with the band… Big band at the time, the Buddy Rich big band, I just couldn’t connect at the time. But Miles, whew… Tony’s the reason I started drumming; I saw him play a lot but I never really hung a lot. I studied with Lenny White, which was pretty close!

One of my favorite drummer-led records was [Tony Williams Blue Note date] Spring…

WJ: …With Sam Rivers…

Allison: Which I think was [Tony’s] first record; I love that record!

Carl: [Tony] was very young then…

Allison: Yeah, he was very young.

Carl: The interesting thing about this particular track [“There Comes a Time”] is how the role of the drums changes; its not so much that he’s a timekeeper, but he’s playing a lot of colors and creating a lot of moods, which is really hip. Tony to me was a genius. I asked Alan Dawson, who had Tony as a student at 12, about the hi hat thing that he used to do with Miles, playing quarter notes. And [Dawson] said when he came in for his first lesson he was doing that and he hadn’t seen anyone do that. So he said [to Tony] “what is that, why are you doing that?” Tony said “that’s what I hear.” [Dawson] says he was always grateful that he never asked [Tony] to change that; he just said “if that’s what you hear, that’s what it is.”

[Tony] had a concept at 12! He started playing with Jackie McLean at 16, before he played with Miles. Tony was unbelievable.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO POSTING SOON...

What’s an artist worth? In the case of the Washington area’s regional transit system, apparently not much – if anything at all! The following piece appeared in the June 5 edition of the Washington Post, in the Metro section, page 1, accompanied by a photo of a young man in full-throated (and appropriately fedora-clad) presentation of his take on Michael Jackson. He was described as one of apparently a long line of hopefuls vying for an opportunity at a sanctioned busking gig – entertaining Metro (subway) commuters at busy Metro stations.

Now let’s contrast that with a news item I heard just yesterday; namely that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is reporting a end-of-fiscal-year (June 30) budget SURPLUS of $25M, reportedly the second straight year of budget surplus! And you’re still telling us that you will not pay these musicians you are auditioning and sanctioning for busking gigs at Metro stations, nor will you allow them to solicit tips from appreciative listeners. What a commentary on the value of artistry! Read on, and please leave your take on this in the Comments section.

Performers vie for chance to entertain Metro commuters

Video: On Tuesday, dozens of musicians, dancers, and storytellers competed to perform at DC Metro entrances. A panel of five judges reviewed the talent and will pick 15 winners to entertain crowds at select stations or on the National Mall from June through November. The artists will not be paid and cannot ask for tips, but are still eager to perform.

By Mark Berman and Nicole Chavez
(Published: June 5 in the Washington Post Metro section)

Metro, about to launch a new rail line, has a lot of openings for jobs that pay. And then it has some spots that don’t offer a dime.

Undaunted by the prospect of working for free, dozens of aspiring entertainers turned out for auditions this week at the transit agency’s headquarters, hoping for a chance to sing, dance or otherwise showcase themselves outside Metro stations.

Not only will they see no money from Metro, the chosen performers can’t accept tips, however much they might impress passing commuters.

And before they play a single note, they have to pass a background check and confirm their legal immigration status. Oh, and they will be performing outside, in the heat and humidity that mark summer in Washington.

But a hip-hop dance crew, a 10-year-old guitarist, three preteen sisters and the 60 other aspiring acts knew there was one thing a Metro gig could deliver: an audience from among the hundreds of thousands of daily rail riders.

The singers, dancers, musicians and spoken-word artists auditioned Tuesday night for “MetroPerforms!” The program chooses entertainers to perform at select station entrances.

Metro will notify those who made the cut next week.

The venues aren’t perfect. Commuters tend to be in a hurry, and riders not wearing ear buds end up listening to announcements about delays, elevator outages or weekend track work.

But any audience can be better than no audience.

“There are a lot of people who enter and exit the system,” said Michael McBride, who runs Art in Transit, Metro’s public arts program. “It’s a captive audience almost — they’re moving, but captive.”

MetroPerforms! launched in 2007 and was revived last year after a hiatus. Artists used to receive a stipend that came from local arts councils, but that money dried up. Still, musicians encouraged Metro to bring back the program, McBride said.

John Campbell, a trombone player, practiced “Every Breath You Take” with the other members of his trio while they waited their turn. Campbell said he didn’t know beforehand that the Metro program didn’t pay. “It’s kind of frustrating,” said Campbell, 25, of Northwest Washington. “But I’m still going to try out. Because what I’ve learned over the years is it’s not about the money, it’s about the music.”

Many of those who showed up said they already performed on streets around the District. Campbell said his group was hired to perform at a party after being spotted playing on a street in Adams Morgan.

Even artists with other gigs want to play at Metro stations “just to be seen, be heard,” said cellist Elise Cuffy of Northwest. Cuffy was auditioning with her classical-jazz-funk fusion sextet SynchroniCity, which has performed at Blues Alley and other venues in the area.

“It seemed like they loved us!” she said after the audition.

Performances will occur during lunchtime and the evening commute from June through September. The exact station locations will be determined once the artists are picked next week. Some want to be close to home, while others want high-profile spots, such as Gallery Place and Metro Center.

And after all that, there’s no guarantee that riders will pause outside a station to listen.

“Honestly, I’m not sure if I would stop, because I need to catch my train,” Maggie Sowards of Alexandria said Wednesday outside the McPherson Square station. “I wish them good luck. It takes courage to stand in the heat for that long.”

The hopefuls came with drum kits and guitars, keyboards and a tuba.

Each act was given three minutes to wow a panel of five judges that included McBride and representatives of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and the Kennedy Center. Many performances in the windowless meeting room were interrupted by the same set of questions from the judges: Do you have another song? Will you use a microphone? Can you fill up a full hour?

Robin Smallwood of Southeast, carrying a dictionary and a banana, told the judges she was there “to sing and to inspire.”

Smallwood sang, started a spoken-word selection about the wonders of reading and balanced a dictionary on her head as part of her audition. She said she heard about the event only a few hours earlier, so she didn’t have a chance to pick up her unicycle.

After Nora Kelsall, a 16-year-old from Northwest, played a soothing piece on her harp, the room was still with admiration.

“Can you imagine what your gift will do for someone in the middle of a rough day?” McBride asked her after she finished playing.

Commuters might “appreciate the music,” Kelsall said after her audition. “If they don’t like it, they would keep walking.”

One thing we’re blessed with at Tri-C JazzFest is a excellent photographic images chronicling our event. We’re very fortunate to have covering every angle of the festival our veteran photo eye Jeff Forman. So in the true spirit of letting these images tell their story, here’s our photo essay on Tri-C JazzFest 2013 April 19-27.

Jeff Forman captured this tasty silhouette of Tri-C JazzFest (TCJF) art with Robert Glasper.

The Robert Glasper Experiment brought a vibrant, youthful audience to the Ohio Theatre on Saturday, April 20 for the first in our 4-pack series of matinee concerts.

Kenny Garrett was in superb form at his Ohio Theatre matinee on April 20, playing so strong that at one point he took the horn out of his mouth and – I swear – began speaking in tongues! Without question a spiritual highlight of Tri-C JazzFest 2013.

On April 27 TCJF feted our Cleveland homeboy Joe Lovano with a hometown 60th birthday celebration. For the gala occasion Joe not only led his brilliant dual-drummer Us Five unit, he also welcomed to the stage his songbird wife Judi Silvano, and he musically embraced such Cleveland stalwarts important to his formative years as fellow tenor man Ernie Krivda, drummers Val Kent, his brother Carl Lovano, Carmen Castaldi, and Greg Bandy, trumpeter Kenny Davis, B-3 ace Eddie Baccus and several other Cleveland jazz warriors for a wonderful celebration. Joe’s dad, Cleveland’s legendary ancestor tenor man Tony “Big T” Lovano was definitely in the house in spirit!

Joe Lovano’s birthday celebration capped two TCJF Saturdays of stellar matinee concerts (Glasper and Garrett were the preceding Saturday); opening our final Saturday matinee series was the singular guitar artistry of Bill Frisell and his Beautiful Dreamers trio (Eyvind Kang, viola and Rudy Royston, drums). Lovano and Frisell have been cohorts, most notably as members of the ancestor drummer Paul Motian‘s band, dating back to Berklee; so it was no surprise when Joe strolled out playing tenor to cap off one of Frisell’s familiar themes towards the end of the latter’s set. They followed that with a joyous stroll through a bop anthem.

Trombonist Chris Anderson was this year’s music director of TCJF’s resident ensemble SoundWorks. For this year’s program they played tribute to the great Dexter Gordon on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the tenor man’s birth. Apropos one of Dexter’s accomplished acolytes, saxophonist Javon Jackson (one of TCJF’s artists-in-residence this year) was special guest in a performance preceded by a warm Dexter remembrance discussion between Javon and Dex’s widow jazz historian Maxine Gordon.

Young trumpet guns, and Tri-C Jazz Studies alums Curtis Taylor (shown performing with SoundWorks) and Dominick Farinacci (adjudicating and performing with his band, which included pianist Aaron Diehl and the extraordinary vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant during our DownBeat Invitational evenings) were all over this year’s TCJF.

Each season of Tri-C JazzFest we introduce some of the most exceptional young artists to our audiences; for our 2013 festival that artist was unquestionably the young singer Cecil McLorin Salvant, who at the time was on the cusp of her sensational debut recording Woman Child on the Mack Avenue label.

Pianist Orrin Evans (shown in performance with drummer Donald Edwards and bassist Ben Wolfe) and clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen (shown in full throat with the visiting Rimon Ensemble from Tel Aviv, Israel) were our other two artists-in-residence for TCJF jazz ed days and DownBeat Invitational concert evenings.

Guitarist Lionel Loueke was simply magical in trio performance at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) before a packed, enthusiastic audience.

Natalie Cole always delivers! She’s a first-class professional who truly knows how to stroke an audience, presenting a varied set that included her jazz work, a reprise of her famous dad-on-screen duo with Nat, and her pop hits to send our big stage State Theatre (last of four such TCJF gigs) finale concert audience home happy. And she had superb accompaniment by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra – who played an opening set, with the great bassist John Clayton shown conducting.

For more information visit JazzFest at www.tric-cjazzfest.com

Some of the most rewarding in a series of oral history interviews I did on Brooklyn’s rich jazz history, specifically concerning the historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, were with the good folks associated with the legendary East, a peerless Afrocentric venue of the 1970s. The man who largely curated the East’s exceptional schedule of weekend performances, as well as the music component of Brooklyn’s equally legendary (and still operating) International African Arts Festival, was Mensah Wali, someone I met through our mutual friend NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston. Several years ago Mensah relocated to Pittsburgh to work with Gail Austin in developing arts programs in that home to so many of jazz music’s master contributors. Together Mensah and Gail run the lively presenting organization known as Kente Arts. Last summer, while in Pittsburgh for a lovely weekend commemoration and reunion of Pittsburgh’s historic black musicians’ union (detailed in the Independent Ear archives), I spent a lovely evening with the two of them, which included catching the outstanding trumpeter Sean Jones under the stars in one of the city’s gently sloped park lands. As Kente Arts vibrant newsletter and event notices continued to roll in, clearly it was time to get caught up with Mensah.

Some months back The Independent Ear ran the interview I did with you for the Weeksville Heritage Center oral history project on your work as music curator at Brooklyn’s legendary East. So how’s a dedicated Brooklynite like yourself wind up in Pittsburgh?

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!! It will make you do all kinds of things. In 1987, Lois Hernandez of the Odunde Festival called a conference of East coast festival organizers in Philadelphia, PA. Adeyemi Bandele, Dr. Segun Shabaka & I went on behalf of the International African Arts Festival. Gail Austin, Sabira Bushra & Dr. Aisha White came from Pittsburgh representing the Harambee II Black Arts Festival. Harambee was on a strong growing curve and needed bigger name artists and I had a book with many of them. So that’s how the communication started. Gail and I eventually married. We had a commuting marriage for the first five years and then I retired and moved to Pittsburgh.

What’s the genesis of Kente Arts Alliance?

While in Brooklyn Adeyemi, Basir Mchawi, Mzee Moyo (RIP) and I formed Kente Productions; when I moved to Pittsburgh and wanted to continue bringing presentations to the community I was granted permission to use Kente for my first promotion in “the Burgh”. Kente Arts Alliance was formed a year later with Gail Austin, Fred Logan, Dr. Aisha White & Lynda Black. In 2007, Kente achieved non-profit status and hasn’t looked back since.

How does Kente Arts Alliance support itself and continue to present performances?

Pittsburgh has a strong foundation community which is supportive of the arts community. Each year, Kente develops a series theme and writes a number of proposals to support the series. We have been very fortunate in catching the attention of the both corporate and non-profit foundations.

Editor’s note: Read on, one such Kente Arts thematic series, focusing on jazz ROYalty, is detailed below…

What’s been the Pittsburgh community response to Kente Arts Alliance and your activities?

Like all small non-profits vying for limited dollars, we struggled at first. After six years, Kente has attracted a loyal following that have helped us to grow. As that support grows, we are aiming to build an organization that is sustainable by increasing our revenues beyond foundational support. Apparently, our strategy is working. We are increasing our number of sold out or nearly sold out performances, thereby increasing our ticket revenues.

Talk about last season’s Royalty series.

Our Jazz Royalty Series featuring Roy Ayers & Roy Haynes was the most successful series of all. Unfortunately the last Roy in the series [trumpeter Hargrove] was unable to make it. On April 28, 2012, we presented Roy Ayers, who as you know, is a cultural icon, often referred to as “the Godfather of Neo – Soul. Ayers is among the best-known, most-loved and respected jazz/R&B artists on the music scene today. Now in his fourth decade in the music business, Ayers continues to bridge the gap between generations of music lovers. Today, the dynamic music man is an iconic figure still in great demand and whose music has been sampled by music industry heavyweights, including Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, 50 Cent, A Tribe Called Quest, Tupac, and Ice Cube. Like many presenters and jazz promoters, Kente has struggled with attracting patrons to jazz productions in the age range below fifty five years and younger. We knew the Ayers audience would attract that population. Our hope was that we would be able to carry over those patrons to the next concert.

Our next concert in the series was NEA Jazz Master Roy Haynes. Last year, Haynes celebrated his 87th birthday and is a fireball of energy. As you know, Haynes is a jazz legend of unsurpassed accomplishments and for the last 60 years or more continues to wow audiences where ever he performs. In spite of his age and longevity in the music business, Haynes’ work is always fresh. Critics often say his music is as fresh today as it was 50 years ago when he played with Charlie Parker. But most astonishing about Haynes is that his playing and energy defy his age. We knew going in that younger audiences, if introduced to Haynes, would be won over to seek a music alternative beyond pop music. Apparently, we were right. The University of Pittsburgh sponsored 36 undergraduates to attend the concert, and members of Haynes Fountain of Youth Band presented a talk back session for them after the concert. The students were wowed by the performance and hopefully will continue to seek out this music.

Following Roy Haynes’ triumphant performance Mensah and Gail Austin (center) joined Kente board member Dr. Harry Clark, pianist Martin Bejerano, saxophonist Jaleel Shaw (left) and bassist David Wong, members of Roy’s Fountain of Youth band onstage

What’s upcoming for Kente Arts Alliance?

Our next series is “Africa Calling”. It was kicked-off with the vitality of The Universal African Dance & Drum Ensemble on April 20, 2013. This was our first venture with a dance presentation and we will continue on in October 26 with another expression of Africa in our music legacy. Of course your next question is WHO will that be? By force of habit/experience, I will not say until the ink is dry and were ready to promote. I promise, you will be among the first to know.

Back in 1968 in my Freshman year at Kent State, when I was basically getting my feet wet in this music we call jazz, I was encouraged by a good friend to check out a concert on the campus of Baldwin-Wallace College in one of Cleveland’s far west side suburbs. The feature was the Charles Lloyd Quartet, with Keith Jarrett on piano, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and bassist Ron McClure (by that juncture Cecil McBee had split the bass chair). I had heard some buzz from the pop press on this quartet, which was quite unusual for an acoustic jazz quartet at the time. Seems this band was one of a handful of jazz bands booked into Bill Graham’s Filmore venues, East and West, and was one of the few bands that for some reason had been embraced by the psychedelic generation of my peers. Consequently they led something of a “rock star” existence, playing not only the Filmores but also touring the Soviet Union, which was pretty rare for those days. Much of that cache had to do with their breakthrough Monterey Jazz Festival recording of Lloyd’s transcendent piece “Forest Flower” for Atlantic Records. For some reason the psychedelic generation really took to that piece and consequently the Charles Lloyd Quartet became pretty big for an acoustic jazz band, let alone one with a somewhat “free” playing proclivity.

It was a fascinating concert at BW, and though Charles Lloyd was at the time being lumped in the post-Coltrane school of tenor acolytes, his tenor approach was of softer focus than the Trane school; there was an airy, pastoral quality to his tone; and though he could certainly go “out”, there was a somewhat tethered sensibility to his outer limits. And to augment his spirited tenor work Lloyd chose the more avian tones of the flute, rather than the prevailing soprano saxophone doublers rage that gripped so many tenor players in the wake of John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” breakthrough. Of equal interest was the sense of connectedness between the writhing, moaning piano man Keith Jarrett – not to mention he was also the rare white guy sporting an afro at the time, and who on first appearance appeared to be black – and the impossibly loose-limbed drummer Jack DeJohnette. Obviously their connection was even deeper than it appeared that afternoon as 18 years later, in 1983, they would come together again through Jarrett’s long and successful relationship with the ECM label as one of the late 20th century and today’s singular small bands; at first referred to as the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio, then simply as Jarrett-Peacock-DeJohnette as it became clear that although Jarrett’s name is on the marquee, there’s been a cooperative sensibility within that great trio for many years.

Manfred Eicher must have loved that Charles Lloyd Quartet as well. In the 80s he recorded several of now-NEA Jazz Master Jack DeJohnette’s seminal recordings; likewise Eicher recorded Lloyd’s 90s return to record, a relationship which extends to Charles’ present recorded exploits. Four of those Jack DeJohnette sessions have just been reissued by ECM as a Jack DeJohnette Special Edition box set. Following on the heels of the DeJohnette box is Charles Lloyd Quartets, reprising five of Lloyd’s 90s recordings. Befitting ECM’s tight, simplistically-focused design tradition both sets are the same no-frills white boxes; no bells and whistles (recalling certain extravagant reissue boxes, like the over-designed lucite box number from Herbie Hancock’s vault that is so “cute” one can hardly fit the discs back in the attendant slots), each of these ECM boxes come with sufficiently informative liner and session notes.


While Lloyd’s unit of choice remains the quartet, DeJohnette has exercised a broad range of personnel configurations down through the years. These include the powerful lineup he assembled for his original Special Edition release: David Murray and Arthur Blythe on saxophones were at the time a kind of California expat sax dream team, having each made big impacts on the scene when they arrived in New York in the late 1970s. Bassist Peter Warren rounded out this exceptional piano-less cast. (At that Lloyd quartet sighting in ’68, little did I know at the time that DeJohnette was also a gifted keyboard player. In an interview last winter Billy Hart told me how surprised he was to see Jack playing drums when DeJohnette got to New York; he’d seen him around Chicago playing piano and organ! Small wonder that DeJohnette is one of our most supremely musical drummers.) to Coltrane is payed via John’s tunes “Central Park West” and “India,” however the key to this recording is DeJohnette’s “Zoot Suite.” Tin Can Alley casted Jack’s fellow Chicagoan Chico Freeman and John Purcell on reeds and flutes, plus the sturdy Warren. Jack’s extended ballad “Pastel Rhapsody”, with its lovely harmonies and DeJohnette’s overdubbed piano (or were the drums overdubbed?). But don’t sleep the raucous, bump & grind blues “I Know,” with Jack signifying vocally. Inflation Blues reprises the twin reeds of Freeman and Purcell, adding the free-leaning trumpet of St. Louis’ Baikida Carroll and Jack’s Chicago homeboy Rufus Reid on acoustic bass, plus a rare Rufus hearing on bass guitar. From this session Jack’s piece “Ebony” always struck me as something that might have been the hippest evening news intro tune had someone had big enough ears to so adapt it. Album Album closes out the box. Remember the lovely, woodsy shot of Jack’s family that graced the original Lp version? A couple of years ago when I met Jack’s youngest daughter Minya at the Panama Jazz Festival I reminded her of that cover shot, which pictured her in the position of precocious child; (she’s now married to Jack’s sound technician Ben Surman, son of saxophonist and frequent DeJohnette collaborator John Surman) she grinned and blushed at the memory of that apparent childhood embarrassment. From that session comes two of Jack’s more indelible compositions, “Ahmad The Terrible,” his homage to Ahmad Jamal, and “Zoot Suite.” Tuba and baritone saxman Howard Johnson lends additional bottom to the Purcell-Murray-Reid lineup in the ensemble. And if you can find it, get the Lp; besides the very warm front & back cover DeJohnette family photo treatment (doubtless standing in the Woodstock forest), this rare ECM gatefold package contains a priceless DeJohnette and sidemen black & white family photo montage inside (including Johnson in his Massilon High School marching band uniform and Murray as a schoolboy high jumper).

Meanwhile Lloyd’s ECM affiliation is ongoing, including brilliant documentations of his deep relationships with subsequent pianists Brad Mehldau, Geri Allen, and currently Jason Moran (including their most recent ECM duo session Hagar’s Song). The Charles Lloyd box contains his five ECM releases spanning 1990-97: Fish Out of Water, Notes from Big Sur (an obvious homage to the idyllic, fairly isolated life he and wife Dorothy Darr carved out in that “God’s country” sector of the California coastline), The Call, All My Relations, and Canto. Though many writers have remarked substantively on the key role of pianists in Lloyd’s music, from the salad days with Jarrett to his 80s reawakening by the late Michel Petrucciani, to Mehldau, Allen and his current piano mate Moran, recalling his Quartet days with DeJohnette, Charles Lloyd has long had a thirst for resourceful, challenging drummers who push his artistry to great limits. After DeJohnette came Sunship Theus, Jon Christenson, Billy Higgins (the latter two being more about texture than explosion), Ralph Peterson, and for three of the dates in this box the broad artistry of Billy Hart. Currently Lloyd is further challenged by Moran’s Houston homie, the crafty and propulsive Eric Harland.